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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 March 2019
Mark Mazower's latest book, No Enchanted Palace: the End of Empire and the Ideological Origins of the United Nations intelligently weaves in the League of Nations as the primary informant of the United Nations to deconstruct any claims of discontinuities between the two institutions. In doing so, Mazower offers an eloquent polemic against the literature's tendency to idolize the United Nations' founding as a symbolic and material break from empire. Exploring the dark sides of its intellectual origins and early years, however, Mazower points to the decolonization movement to argue for the potential of the United Nations as a site of emancipatory struggle — his book concludes with a reinvestment in its promise of a more inclusive and just world order. The issue left to the reader, and which I hope to address in this review essay, is the legitimacy of Mazower's claim that the United Nations has indeed escaped its imperial heritage.
1 Chomsky, Noam, Statement by Professor Noam Chomsky to the United Nations General Assembly Thematic Dialogue on the Responsibility to Protect, New York, United Nations (2009) available at: http://www.un.org/ga/president/63/interactive/protect/noam.pdf (last accessed: 17 July 2011).Google Scholar
2 Mazzini, Giuseppe was a staunch supporter of nationalism as represented by the nation-state. He aspired for a United States of Europe as the subsequent step in the ladder of nation building, after the consolidation of the modern state of Italy. In an impassioned passage from one of his collections, Mazzini argues that “to attempt to cancel the sentiment of the fatherland from the heart of the peoples – abruptly to suppress every nationality – to confound the different missions assigned by God to the different tribes of the human family – to bring that hierarchy, formed by providential design, of the various associations of men down to the level of … aimless Cosmopolitanism – to dash to pieces the ladder by which humanity is destined to ascend to the ideal – is to attempt the impossible.” He further argues that the “Pact of humanity” can only be realized by peoples and not by individuals, “possessing a name, a banner and the consciousness of a distinct individual existence… you must speak to them of country and nationality, and impress in vivid characters upon the brow of each the sign of their existence and baptism as a nation.” Giuseppe Mazzini, Life and Writings of Joseph Mazzini, Volume III, Autobiographical and Political 14, 15 (1891).Google Scholar
3 Rich, Paul, Alfred Zimmern's Cautious Idealism: The League of Nations, International Education, and the Commonwealth, in Thinkers of the Twenty Years’ Crisis: Inter-war Idealism Reassessed 82 (David Long & Peter Wilson eds., 1995), (citing a letter exchange between Gilbert Murray and Alfred Zimmern in 1915).Google Scholar
4 This did not necessarily contradict Zimmern's earlier commitment to nationalism; in fact, it reinforced it.Google Scholar
5 Mazower, Mark, No Enchanted Palace: The End of Empire and the Ideological Origins of the United Nations 106 (2009).Google Scholar
6 Mazower used this term to describe how the UN is portrayed in the literature he is reacting against. He claims that one of the two purposes of the book is to challenge the belief that the UN rose as an Aphrodite, “uncontaminated” by the failures of its predecessor institution. Id. at 14.Google Scholar
7 Id. Evidently, British imperial thought was instrumental in the creation of this kind of League of Nations. However, as already established in historical literature, the American role was also significant. See for example, Antony Anghie, Colonialism and the Birth of International Institutions: Sovereignty, Economy and the Mandate System of the League of Nations, 34 New York Journal of International Law and Policy 513, 553 (2002); Nussbaum, Arthur, A Concise History of The Law of Nations 247-248 (1954). Notwithstanding any reservations on Nussbaum's account of the history of international law, like many others, he establishes Wilson's relationship to the League and more importantly American imperial thought, particularly in relation to the Monroe Doctrine. As President of the US, Wilson had worked unsuccessfully to create a Pan American Pact that would officiate the Monroe Doctrine, and that would like very similar to a League of Nations. As Nussbaum points out, although the idea of the League of Nations was voiced in Britain during WWI, it was voiced with “less authority and vigor.” Additionally, the American idea of the League as an “alliance” was markedly different from British jurists who compared the League of Nations to a corporation. Nussbaum's last point speaks to Mazower's anxiety about the benevolence of the American story. Nevertheless, a more nuanced study of this “alliance” would quickly uncover it as merely another version of the British corporation.Google Scholar
8 Mazower, , supra note 5, at 15.Google Scholar
9 Id. At 17.Google Scholar
10 Id. at 14, 17, 18.Google Scholar
11 Id. at 18.Google Scholar
12 Id. at 20.Google Scholar
13 Kant, Immanuel, Zum ewigen Frieden. Ein philosophischer Entwurf. (Perpetual Peace. A Philosophical Sketch)(1795).Google Scholar
14 Mazower, , supra, note 5, at 1.Google Scholar
15 See for example, Marks, Susan, Empire's Law, 10 Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 449, 451 (2003); Kennedy, David, The Move to Institutions, 8 Cardozo Law Review 5 (1987).Google Scholar
16 anghie, Anthony, imperialism, sovereignty and the making of international law 117 (2005).Google Scholar
17 The author's purpose might not necessarily be establishing the UN's lineage of formal empire. Still, it is not clear why this is the second of the two central theses of a book, published in 2009. Whom is Mazower responding to? This question also arises when we look into Mazower's choice of characters – each, as an iteration of the former – which emphasizes the claim that international institutions were instrumental in sustaining the imperial policies of the time. Although the choice of Jan Smuts as the primary protagonist is an “easy target,” it becomes more understandable once you reach the book's final chapter. The final chapter highlights Smuts's role in Apartheid South Africa, which, according to Mazower, initiated the spark of anti-colonial movements that strategically used the UN as a podium for voicing criticisms of the imperial logic that still reigned throughout the world. Nevertheless, the infamy of Jan Smuts crowds historical inquiry whether in law, politics, or history. Considered the mastermind behind the Mandate System, Smuts's role in the project of empire building is far from peripheral in the literature. Equally important is the institutional environment that made Smuts successful. However, Mazower's concern with establishing the British connection might simply be explained by the fact that he is an intellectual historian who is writing a corrective narrative of what he views to be a widespread misconception in his field regarding the perceived influence of British imperial thought versus its American counterpart.Google Scholar
18 Mutua, Makau wa, Why Redraw the Map of Africa: A Moral and Legal Inquiry, 16 Michigan Journal of International Law 1112, 1123 (1994-1995).Google Scholar
19 Mazower, , supra note 5, at 185.Google Scholar
20 See for example, antonio cassese, self-determination of peoples: a legal appraisal 133 (1995); Crawford, James, The Right of Self-Determination in International Law: Its Development and Future in Peoples’ Rights 58 (Philip Alston ed., 2001); Thomas M. Franck, The Democratic Entitlement, 29 Richmond Law Review 1, 9 (1994-1995). This literature has generally argued that national self-determination (as one representation of international law), by transcending the political chaos, into law, has moved to an apolitical realm. The creation of the United Nations is seen as a turning point that fundamentally transformed the nature of the international system; it swiftly moved the global order from the dark recesses of politics to the light of law. Evidently, this thesis has been widely defeated, particularly by post-modern international lawyers, who see the constitutive slippage between law and politics as a foundational hallmark of the international legal system.Google Scholar
21 Mazower, , supra note 5, at 108 & 132.Google Scholar
22 While a “double standards” critique is not antithetical to a structural one – in fact, it can illuminate the system's internal contradictions – there is still a presumption that the problem lies in the inequality of results, as opposed to the system that creates this inequality in the first place.Google Scholar
23 Mazower, , supra note 5, at 64.Google Scholar
24 Notably, Mazower, in an anti-realist move, argues that “there is much plausibility in the idea that the UN was designed by, and largely operative as an instrument of, great power politics. Still, this is not the whole story by any means….” Nevertheless, his story barely transcends these boundaries. Mazower, supra note 5, at 10.Google Scholar
25 Mazower, , supra note 5, at 83.Google Scholar
26 Id. at 34.Google Scholar
27 Id. at 146.Google Scholar
28 Evidently, this argument has been made many times in international legal literature. See, among many others, Bill Bowring, Positivism versus Self-Determination: the Contradictions of Soviet International Law, in International law on the Left: RE-Examining Marxist Legacies 143 (Susan Marks ed., 2008).Google Scholar
29 Mazower, , supra note 5, at 23 & 193.Google Scholar
30 Macmillan, Margaret, Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World 88 (2002).Google Scholar
31 Id. at 88.Google Scholar
32 Some examples of Wilson's racism include his sanctioning of several members of Cabinet, including his son-in-law, Secretary William Gibbs McAdoo, to introduce racial segregation among employees in their department. He later responded to a letter from his white-supremacist acquaintance that complained about the appointment of a “Negro to boss white girls” by emphasizing his sincere “commitment to segregation in the federal bureaucracy.” See Erez Manela, The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anti-Colonial Nationalism 26 & 27 (2007).Google Scholar
33 Mazower contrasts British imperial policies of annexations of German and Ottoman possessions with Wilsonian self-determination, seen in that light as the friendlier of the two evils.Google Scholar
34 Eric Hobsbawm makes the analogy between Hamlet's taunting of Polonius and nationalism, but argues that it is actually neither a camel, a weasel, or a whale. Eric Hobsbawm, Some Reflections on ‘The Break-up of Britain,' 1 new Left Review 105 (1977).Google Scholar
35 Id. Google Scholar
36 Klabbers, Jan, Review: Mark Mazower. No Enchanted Palace: the End of Empire and the Ideological Origins of the United Nations, 21 European Journal of International Law 789, 790 (2010).Google Scholar
37 Mazower, , supra note 5, at 123.Google Scholar
38 Id. at 137.Google Scholar
39 Id. at 124.Google Scholar
40 Clearly, this apprehension was comprehensively illustrated (from a very different vantage point) in Martti Koskenniemi's seminal work The Gentle Civilizer of Nations, where he declared, in an albeit ironic register, international law dead in 1960. Martti Koskenniemi, The Gentle Civilizer of Nations: The Rise and Fall of International Law 1870-1960 (2002).Google Scholar
41 In a contemporary sense, even among arguments about the “withering away” of the state, nation-states are still considered an indispensible feature of the current structures of global governance and international law, and that such “withering away” is only to the extent of the internationalism exercised by political and economic international institutions. See Ruth Buchanan & Sundhya Pahuja, Law, Nation and (Imagined) International Communities, 8 Law Text Culture 1, 4 (2002).Google Scholar
42 Mazower, , supra note 5, at 68.Google Scholar
43 Id. at 89.Google Scholar
44 Another interpretation of Mazower's inclinations is that he sees the value in tactically utilizing ideas of liberal internationalism, such as self-determination to disrupt that same ideology of liberal internationalism.Google Scholar
45 Mazower, , supra note 5, at 153.Google Scholar
46 The UN, therefore, becomes non-ideological.Google Scholar
47 Mieville, China, Between Equal Rights: A Marxist Theory of International Law 270 (2006); see also Gerry Simpson, Great Powers and Outlaw States: Unequal Sovereigns in the International Legal Order (2004).Google Scholar
48 Although the decolonization movement of the 1950s and 1960s, the resonance of the idea of national self-determination outside the European world was already prominent during WWI and was culminated at the “Wilsonian moment” in 1919. See generally, Manela, supra note 32.Google Scholar
49 Mazower, , supra note 5, at 157Google Scholar
50 Id. at 189. See also here, supra note 44.Google Scholar
51 issues before the general assembly of the united nations (1946-1952) 20 (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Arno Pub., Vol. I., 1970).Google Scholar
52 Mazower, , supra note 5, at 157.Google Scholar
53 Mazower, , supra note 5, at 25.Google Scholar
54 This phrase is borrowed from Paulo Freire. Freire was outlining the requirements of a revolution (or a revolutionary change). Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed 107 (1999).Google Scholar
55 Mazower, , supra note 5, at 188.Google Scholar
56 Id. at 194.Google Scholar
57 Id. at 198. However, as Franz Fanon said, for 95 percent of the population of the colonized world, decolonization has not brought about any positive change in their lives. Franz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth 35 (2004).Google Scholar
58 Mazower, , supra note 5, at 6.Google Scholar
59 Id. at 18.Google Scholar
60 Koskenniemi, Martti, Why History of International Law Today? 4 Rechtsgeschichte 61 (2004); Allot, Philip, International Law and the Idea of History, 1 Journal of the History of International Law 1 (1999); Craven, Mathew, Introduction: International Law and Its Histories, in Time, History and International Law (Mathew Craven, Malgosia Fitzmaurice & Maria Vogiatzi eds., 2007).Google Scholar
61 See for example, Berman, Nathaniel, But the Alternative is Despair: European Nationalism and the Modernist Renewal of International Law, 106 Harvard Law Review 1792 (1992-1993).Google Scholar
62 Kennedy, David, When Renewal Repeats: Thinking Against the Box, 32 New York University Journal of International Law and Politics 335 (2000).Google Scholar
63 Id., at 335. See also Kennedy, David, International Law and the Nineteenth Century: History of an Illusion, 65 Nordic Journal of International Law 385-387 (1996).Google Scholar
64 Skouteris, Thomas, Review Essay, 22 Leiden Journal of International Law 857 (2009): Russel A. Miller & Rebecca M. Bratspies (eds.), Progress in International Law, 22 Leiden Journal of Int'l law.857 (2009).Google Scholar
65 See, among many, Foucault, Michel, Nietzsche, Genealogy, History, in Language, Counter-memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews (Donald F. Bouchard ed., 1977).Google Scholar
66 As Ernesto Laclau points out, post-moderns can be perceived to be “weakening the imperialist foundationalism of Western Enlightenment and opening the way to a more democratic cultural pluralism; but they can also be perceived as underpinning a notion of ‘weak’ identity which is incompatible with the strong cultural attachments required by a ‘politics of authenticity'.” Ernesto Laclau, Emancipation(s) 47 (2007).Google Scholar
67 Mazower, , supra note 5, at 102.Google Scholar
68 Id. at 103.Google Scholar
69 Hardt, Michael & Negri, Antonio, Empire 17-21 (2000). Given the post-Cold War American language of commercial and communicative connectedness as a means to realize freedom, Mazower's analogy can be plausible on some level.Google Scholar
70 Mazower, , supra note 5, at 201.Google Scholar
71 Id. at 200 & 203.Google Scholar
72 Id. at 203.Google Scholar
73 Id. at 191 (emphasis added).Google Scholar
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